Should I Die Before I Wake
by GeishaGirl93
Summary: Maleficent leaves her mark.


Disclaimer: I own nothing; all rights to these characters belong to Disney.  
A/N: I'm probably gonna be on this kick for a while so be prepared, my darlings. Sequel? Meh, who knows? Let's just see how this goes, shall we? Inspired after reading _Succubi_ by_ fall from stars_; great work; go read it. Right now.

Title: Should I Die Before I Wake  
Summary: Maleficent leaves her mark.  
Pairing(s): Maleficent/Aurora  
Warning(s): femslash, dark stuff, post-movie, Fpreg because Maleficent is the queen of all badasses and she can do that shit . . . yeah, I think that's it.

Xxxx

**I.**

The darkness breaks, and Aurora opens her eyes to stare into Prince Phillip's.

Aurora smiles at him because it feels like the correct thing to do. He has broken her curse; he loves her, and that's enough. Despite her naivety and lack of knowledge of royal affairs, the faeries informed her of her queenly and wifely duties (moments before the world became nothing but warm darkness). They will marry, and when their parents are gone, they will become the new King and Queen and produce little prince and princess. Already Aurora's head is overflowing with visions of faerie-like children with her golden curls and their father's compassionate eyes. They'll be loved throughout the kingdom, wonderful and beautiful princes and princesses that will rule their kingdoms justly and fairly. Then they will marry, and the line will continue; _this _is the most important thing.

Aurora kisses him again before they leave the tower and promises him that she'll do everything right (even when her bones feel awkward beneath her skin, and the kiss is flavorless and dry like the deserts Aurora had read about in the few books the faeries had provided her with).

Phillip smiles at her, and she thinks this is enough.

They are married soon after, and Aurora never tells Phillip of the things she saw while in the slumber, even when the ring solidifies their union, even as he whispers into her ear beautiful things that cannot penetrate the cold that has settled into her body. Every time she closes her eyes, a figure emerges out of the darkness—a woman with a willowy frame and flowing hair; sharpened claws leaving their marks in Aurora's back and arms, lips imprinting her neck and breasts with blisters that leave star-shaped scars, the body rolling into hers as if they were always destined to complete one another, eyes the color of brilliant summer grass staring down at her with malicious intent.

She never tells Phillip these things (or the fact that she's only been able to come to completion when she imagines the ethereal woman on top of her instead of him).

**II.**

One cannot destroy the darkness any more than darkness can destroy light.

This death had certainly been one of the more painful and _humiliating _ones.

When the prince's enchanted blade had plunged into heart, Maleficent had felt the organ burst like a fruit left out to rot and fester under the sun, and it had _hurt_. The pain had been nothing describable, but falling from the cliff certainly didn't _ease _the pain and burn of asphyxiation as she'd spluttered and choked on her own blood. Her bloated, dying boated had fallen down the precipice of the cliff and collided with the rock studded ground below; she'd _felt _every gargantuan bone shatter as if it were nothing more than glass; she'd _felt _jagged shards lodge themselves into her muscle, tissue and organs, and she's positive that she'd bitten through her tongue.

She'd snapped at the prince as she'd fallen, promising sweet vengeance as the flames consumed her and swallowed her flesh and bones.

Her form had erupted like a dying star, and the kingdom believed her to be no more.

In the darkness that linger in-between, she began to plan and gather her strength. Magic cannot be killed; it simply _exists _as air exists. It cannot be seen or smelled or tasted, but it can be _controlled_, manipulated to certain extents that did not exceed its limits, and Maleficent was, after-all, a master of the art of manipulation.

Rebuilding one's form is a painful, slow process. It can take months, years, even _centuries _depending on the severity of the wounds. Maleficent had taken her time, though. She wants the form to be _perfect _for when she goes to visit the prince and princess. Whispers buzzed through the air, and Maleficent had heard them as if they were twinkling silver bells:

_Have you heard the Prince and Princess are expecting?_

Maleficent simply _must _go give them her congratulations.

From wood and soft earth, she made her bones, muscles, skin and nails; she solidified water so that it could become her organs, tissue and hair; alchemized fire became the pulsating core that would be her heart and heat; she drew air into her still lungs and urged herself to _breathe_ over and over again until breathing once again became a natural occurrence.

Once Maleficent settled into her new form, her essence filling the empty spaces and cracks, only then did she open her eyes.

Above her, the sky was the brilliant blue of Aurora's eyes.

She'd smiled and the earth yielded beneath her feet, singed earth the only indicator that someone (or some_thing_) had ever been there.

**III.**

The kingdom celebrates the announcement of Aurora's pregnancy. It's a joyous occasion, one that makes her father beam with pride and causes her mother to cry softly behind her delicate hand. Phillips lifts her into the air and spins her around once, twice, three times and kisses her as if he's trying to fill her with his essence.

(The kiss tastes sour, but Aurora says nothing because she's made her husband happy, and she'll give birth to a son or daughter, and everything will be good and right.)

Aurora sleeps deeply during her pregnancy, but her dreams are anything but peaceful. She dreams of thorns and blood-stained swords chasing her through a darkness riddled with barbs. Phillip's kisses taste like blood in her dreams, and sometimes, the baby inside her squirms and writhes more like an animal than a human; it claws at the soft tissue that serves as its home, and Aurora sometimes dreams that from her mouth spews black sludge that smells of rotten, fetid things.

Other nights, she dreams of giving birth, and her child comes out is all wrong: bones bent at awkward angles, eyes the color of the cloudy marbles that the children in the village love to play with, hair a beautiful blonde, skin discolored and splotchy, and hard, black scales erupting from thin, gray skin. Her baby searches for her blindly, calls out to her with a pitiful bleating sound, and it breaks her heart. She calls the midwife over and asks for a basin of water. She kisses her newborn three times, whispers her love and drowns it. The baby doesn't fight, just slips into an ever-lasting slumber, and Aurora holds the lifeless body to her chest and screams. But it doesn't sound like a scream; it sounds like the howl of a broken animal ready for death.

When she wakes up, she manages to stop the screams before they come. When she looks to Phillip, his face is peaceful and beautiful. She wants to scratch the flesh from his bones, to shout and scream at him, _You did this! You did this! _

She kisses him softly until he wakes up and cradles her against his chest. He used to be so _warm_, his body a roaring fire that chased away the chill that had wrapped around Aurora's bones and settled into her marrow. But now his body might as well be a dying fire clinging to the coals, starving for oxygen and wood.

He kisses her trembling lips and eyelids, run his hands over the developing curve of her belly. He tells her everything will be all right, and she wills it to be true.

**IV.**

She steals clothes from lines and conceals her horns beneath a thick veil of glamour. She may be weak, but she can still manage the basest form of magic. It would be foolish of her to appear before the expecting couple in all her former grandeur. She isn't strong enough to take on the prince should he choose to defend his wife, much less an entire army. Even those meddlesome do-good faeries could kill her again in the state that she was in.

Luckily, Maleficent is a patient woman. She finds a cottage in the forest and uses it as her home. She doesn't bother fixing it up; she'll be moving on shortly. She becomes a seamstress to earn something of a living, despite the fact that she doesn't need to glutton herself as humans do, and sleep is _such_ a trivial task. When she does dream, she dreams of Princess Aurora beneath her, yielding to her as she did in the darkness of her forced sleep. She dreams of that the child within her is the glorious fae child of her design, endowed with the cruelty of its mother and the beauty of its host. But unlike the others, this child would be a _success_; the princess' saint-like nature would guarantee it.

So Maleficent waits, comforted by her dreams and visions of the princess' hair spread out across her pillow like haphazardly spilled sunshine.

Then, after three months of biding her time, the chance emerges in the form of women of the village—limp-haired, overworked, big-boned, built for hardships that their rulers couldn't begin to imagine—talk of the princess needing a midwife, and Maleficent smiles coly at them as probes for information; audiences with the prince and princess will begin first thing tomorrow morning, and any woman that wants the position can come before them and state their case.

Patience is one of the best virtues.

**V.**

Aurora sees many women, all of them well-qualified, but none of them feel right. Phillip becomes frustrated, as do her parents, but she can't just trust _anyone _with the delivery of her child and insurance of her well-being. It has to be the perfect woman, and Aurora finds a flaw in every woman that appears before her: one has hands that are much too large, they could crush her child when it emerges; one is much too thin, her spine and bones betraying her weakness. She'd never last when Aurora went into labor.

Phillip begs her to choose, and she tells him that since _she's_ the one having the baby, _she'll_ be the one that makes the decision. Aurora's voice comes out hoarse and raw, and it startles Phillip as much as it startles her. They fall into a silence that makes them both uncomfortable; it's broken by the announcement of another woman.

Phillip gives his nod and the door opens.

The woman that walks into the hall is beautiful. Her dress is a plain shade of brown with a ripped cream-colored apron tied around the middle. A white headpiece holds her thick hair away from her oval face, the black waves rippling and rolling like languid serpents. Though her clothes belong to the class of the poorer villagers, she wears them with regality; they may as well have been made of silk and studded with the finest jewels. Her skin is the lovely shade of the earth just after a much-needed spring rain, and her face is clean and clear. Her lips are stained a shade of red that Aurora associates with blooming roses (and freshly spilt blood). When she bows before them, her spine is an immovable rod, and the hands that gather the skirt of her dress are small but strong bones flex and move beneath the skin.

"What is your name, my Lady?" Phillip asks and the woman laughs. It is warm and deep; Aurora feels the familiar skitter of pleasure race up her spine (something that she hasn't felt since her time in the slumber).

"I am no Lady, my Prince." The woman is still bowing, but now she lifts her head slightly as to peer up at Aurora (not _Phillip_ and Aurora, not _Phillip_, but solely at _Aurora_) from beneath a thick curtain of black lashes. "I am known as Mab around the village."

"How long have you been in your profession, Mab?" Phillip questions.

Mab's smile is the curve of a sickle moon against a velvet sky, "For many years now, my Prince. I have delivered many babes in my time, all of them healthy and strong."

"You look so young."

"Appearances can be deceiving, my Prince. I was helping my mother bring babies into the world long before I learned how to read or speak my first word."

Phillip smiles at her, "Well, _I _think you are perfect but—"

Mab inclines her head towards Aurora's seat, "It is not up to you, my Prince. It is up to the Princess. I would be honored to help, but if the Princess doesn't want my aid, I will hold no guilt or bitterness."

The child inside Aurora stirs as if some great movement has awoken it from its slumber, and Aurora knows—_knows_—that if she dismisses this woman, she will never see her again. Mab will leave and it will be as if she were nothing more than a dream; another woman—a fat, dumpy thing with thin hair and body heavy with rolls of fat—will deliver her baby and accidentally crush its delicate skull with her large, uncoordinated hands, and Aurora _cannot _allow the chance to pass her by.

"Will you do me the pleasure of being my midwife?" Aurora's voice comes out in a quick rush; it feels as if her lungs were forced to exhale all her breath at once. Her heart hammers the beat of a war drum against her ribs, and the child is restless.

Mab dips her head, and her hair parts at her neck to reveal the small, elegant knobs of her spine. "It would be an honor, my Princess."

The child stills.

**VI.**

Maleficent becomes friends with Aurora's handmaidens—wide-eyed girls with delicate bones and full lips untarnished by any man. Maleficent wants to kiss them and take away the rosebud hue of their lips. She wants to peel away the outer layers of their demure personas and revel with the temptresses that long to be free of the large skirts and tight bindings. They talk about the beauty of their princess, of her regality, of pregnancy's warm glow pervading from her skin; Maleficent agrees with them wholeheartedly.

Pregnancy has made Aurora beautiful; she radiates a light that's addictive and warm. Maleficent feels drawn to her as moths are drawn to candle flames; her skin is soft and supple when Maleficent rubs soothing oils into her skin, and her belly is marred with faint red lines that stretch over the growing expanse of her belly. She traces each one carefully, and her child rolls up to meet her.

Aurora blinks at her, eyes glassy and shiny like pools of clear river water, "My baby likes you."

Maleficent can't help but smile, "I should hope so, my Princess."

**VII.**

Mab is a comfort to have. She knows how to soothe the aches that settle deep into Aurora's bones, and the child ceases its kicking and squirming whenever Mab is near. Mab massages deep into Aurora's tissue and joints, her fingers strong and warm; maybe she'd also helped her mother with the baking whenever she wasn't busy delivering young. One warm night, Aurora allows herself to lazily slip into images of a young standing at her mother's waist, elbow deep in soft dough, face streaked with a smudge of flower on her round cheek.

Aurora had laughed and Mab had raised a slender eyebrow at her, "What are you laughing at, Your Majesty?"

"Mab, did you ever help your mother with baking?"

Mab had shaken her head her head, a dark strand of hair curling against her forehead; it's reminiscent of a beckoning finger. "My mother was many things, but a baker she was not."

"What about your father?"

Mag had shrugged and her naked shoulders looked soft in the candlelight. "I have no father, Majesty. He either died when I was very young or ran off when my mother was pregnant."

Aurora had struggled to rise, but when she finally managed to sit up in the bed, she'd placed her hand on Mag's inviting shoulder, and Mab's bronze flesh had felt warm beneath Aurora's hand, the bone fitting perfectly in her palm. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be, my Lady; I cannot miss a man I never knew."

Mab's smile had been so stunningly infectious, it'd made Aurora smile, too. Mab had leaned in very close, and for a few moments, Aurora thought Mab was going to kiss her; she prepared her lips already sighing in contentment. Instead, Mab had pushed Aurora back down onto the bed and lifted her thin nightgown to reveal her belly.

"Come now, Your Majesty. Allow me to finish."

Aurora knows she's falling in love, and she can't seem to hate herself for it.

Early one morning, Mab wrapped her arms around Aurora, her chin rested on the crest of Aurora's shoulder, lips warm against her ear and whispered to her:

"Look, my Lady. Look at how beautiful you are."

Aurora doesn't feel beautiful. She feels bloated and exhausted; it feels as if she's been burdened with an inconceivable amount of weight. She constantly sleep, even when the dreams are disturbing and she wakes from them gasping as if she'd just emerged from the bottom of seemingly bottomless lake. But when Mab says it, Aurora can almost believe it.

Phillip doesn't make love to her anymore, but Aurora can't say she's disappointed or upset. In fact, Phillip's lack of intimacy is a welcome change. Before she became gargantuan, Phillip would curl against her, and Aurora would feel his hardness pressing into her thigh. It made the child violently shift, and Aurora had felt disgust curl in her lower belly. She'd always feign exhaustion and say:

"Please, Phillip, not tonight."

Phillip kisses her each time, but he sleeps violently.

When Mab touches her on the shoulder, neck, leg, thigh, belly, back, the brief touches send something hot racing through Aurora's veins and shooting down her spine. She longs to kiss Mab, to touch her arms and breasts, to offer herself as she'd once been offered to Phillip; but this time, it would be of her _own _violation.

**VIII.**

Maleficent can feel the strength of their child; Aurora feels it, too. Even when her presence has lulled the princess into a deep sleep, the child still causes her discomfort. She makes small, pained noises in her sleep; she shifts and turns constantly, and Maleficent is there, rubbing her back and ankles, cooing soft words to their child—ancient and powerful, known only to the fae. The faeries would know what she was saying, and they would shudder at the promises she vows to keep:

_You will have everything, my beautiful child. You and I will rule this world together, with your mother at our side. We will live forever._

Maleficent does not love the princess. No, the only love she could ever feel would be towards their child, a being that's just like her in every way—the child that now shares Aurora's blood and nourishment. She loves the child because the child _is her_; even in the realm of the fae, lineage is as just important to them as it is to humans.

However, even though Maleficent does not love Aurora, she wants to _keep_ her. Aurora is beautiful; far more beautiful than any jewel or treasure. Despite being heavily pregnant, she moves about the palace as if she were floating instead of dragging her swollen feet across the brick. She still has an air of grace and nobility that most women loose with their pregnancy, and she glows beneath the lights of the dining hall, underneath the wash of candlelight as Maleficent rubs her and tells her lie after lie that Aurora's willing ear is so ready to believe. When Aurora disrobes before her—long, pale limbs soft from the evening bath and scented with wildflowers—Maleficent tries not to purr at the sight of Aurora's breasts heavy with milk. _She _did that to the maiden fair; it's _her _prodigy that grows inside of Aurora's belly, not that laughable prince's.

And Maleficent has always been a little greedy. Once the child is born, and the glamour washed away, she will take what belongs to her. Already her strength returns, and the magic grows. Every day, Aurora draws closer and closer to her time, and the child shifts in restless anticipation beneath Maleficent's hands.

She whispers, _Soon, my darling. We shall have the world._

Beneath the white veil of moonlight, Aurora's breasts are damp with sweat and milk, the nipples hard and rosy against the pale mounds of flesh. Maleficent wants to bend in and kiss them, lick them, mark them as she did so many times in the darkness of Aurora's dreams. Aurora makes soft whimpers and sighs, her golden ringlets clinging to her damp brow. Maleficent wipes them away with a practiced carefulness and bends in to press her lips to Aurora's brow in the mockery of a kiss.

"You belong to us now, my beautiful princess. You belong to us."

The child inside rolls in agreement.

**IX.**

Aurora goes into labor early in the dawn. The pain grows in the night until it locks her inside her bones and steals the air from her lungs. She pants and calls out for Mab; the child grows anxious beneath her hands, and the pain rips free from her throat horrendous sounds that she knows echoes throughout the castle. Her world is deafened by thick cotton that fills her ears, and shapes and colors blur together to form incoherent shapes and formless figures.

Aurora is vaguely aware of someone calling her name, the voice crawls into her ear and curls against her eardrum, purring like a cat being scratched under the chin. Aurora is unaware that she ever closed her eyes, but when she comes back to herself, she stares into the brilliant green of Mag's eyes.

"Mag," her voice catches in her throat, digging its sharp claws into the flesh of her vocal cords, "it hurts _so _much."

Mab gently shushes her and carefully pushes her hair off her forehead. Her lips are warm and soft against Aurora's brow.

"I know it hurts, my Lady, but you must focus. Listen to my voice and use it as an anchor. Listen to yourself and the baby; you know what you must do."

Aurora nods numbly and sucks breathes in the hot air of an early summer day. It clings to her lungs, and she exhales in short, angry bursts. Mab gingerly wipes at her sweaty flesh, kisses her trembling lids and urges her on. Aurora can feel the baby moving down, and it fights on its way into the world. It _scratches _at her, and when she tells Mab so, Mab squeezes her hand and nods slowly:

"I understand, Your Highness. It must be just as painful for the babe as it is for you."

Mab's voice keeps Aurora grounded as she grunts and cries. She feels the sheets turn to ribbons beneath her grasp, and she stretches to impossible lengths as she urges her child into the world. Mab says something that Aurora cannot comprehend, but her voice is overflowing with joy and pride.

And then, Aurora hears her baby cry along with the shriek of several handmaids.

_What? _Aurora wants to ask, but her voice is nothing but a horse whimper, and she blindly searches for faces. _What's wrong with my baby?_

Through the haze, Aurora vaguely makes out the blurred outline of a maid hurrying out the door with a bloody bundle in her arms. She reaches for the maid, screams for her to come back even though no sound leaves her throat. Mab's arms surround her, and her voice breaks through the deafening ring:

"Shh, my lady, all will be well."

Mab's voice leaves no room for argument, and Aurora slips into blackness.

**X.**

The maids call the child a monster, and Maleficent wants to burn them all.

The child is a girl, and her thin skin is riddled with soft black scales around where her bones and joints bend. She has Aurora's blonde curls, but the eyes are all fae—all _Maleficent_; swirling green marbles brimming with magic and wicked intent. Her daughter begins to twitch and spasm, urging its muscles to move and flex as it searches out her mother's milk. Aurora moans and spasms asks over and over again, _Where is it? Where is my baby?_

A young girl with red hair scoops the child up and binds her in a blanket. She looks to Maleficent for guidance, and Maleficent responds:

"Take her to her nursery. I'll be there shortly."

Aurora whimpers beside her, "Mab, please, where is it? Where is my baby?"

Maleficent smiles and kisses Aurora's forehead, "You shall see her soon, your Highness. You shall be with her soon."

Aurora nods and then slips into blissful blackness. Maleficent leaves her with naive girls and sets off to find their offspring.

The child is bleating pitifully when Maleficent finds her. She's been wrapped in ridiculously pink blankets, but they cannot provide the warmth she needs. Maleficent quietly parts the canopy that conceals the girl and carefully removes her from the copious blankets. The baby quiets when Maleficent holds her against her chest. She can feel the knobs of her spine, the fragility of her bones. She makes soft cooing noises and stares up at her mother with impossibly large eyes. Maleficent smiles and kisses her soft skin; the patches of ebony scales yield against Maleficent's, not yet endowed with the strength they need to harden. In the coming years, they would grow and so would the girl, and she would be strong and everything Maleficent ever dreamed of.

"Come now, Andora, let us go fetch your mother." Maleficent says to the newly christened fae child, and the blonde-haired changeling makes an enthusiastic noise that sounds like a dragon awakening from a thousand-year slumber.

Once the glamour is dispelled, the threads that remain seep into the air and perfume it with a heavenly sent that sends the humans into empty dreams. By the time any of them awaken again, they will have no memory of Mab or the newborn monster, but the princess will be gone, and they will cry and worry. That fool prince will send out search parties and find nothing because the realm of fae is invisible to the eyes of mortal men.

Unbeknownst to any of them, Maleficent carries both her daughter and prize. Aurora moans in her sleep, still dressed in nothing but her skin, breasts begging to emptied, skin damp with sweat. Maleficent kisses her on lips and relishes in the taste of exhaustion and subconscious surrender.

"Soon, my darling rose," Maleficent whispers to Aurora as the veil that shields the fae world parts and shimmers; it ripples and wavers like the day beneath an unforgiving soon, and Maleficent smiles as the familiar world unfurls before her eyes.

"Welcome home, my darlings."


End file.
